Nobel Prize Awarded for AIDS, Cervical Cancer Research

by: Thomas H. Maugh II, The Los Angeles Times Nobel Prize winners Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi. Harald zur Hausen of Germany (not pictured) also won the Nobel Prize for medicine. (Photo: Michel Euler / AP) The awards recognize two French researchers who discovered the human AIDS virus and a German scientist who showed that human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer. Two French researchers who discovered the human AIDS virus and a German scientist who showed that human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer were awarded Monday the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The decision in effect ends the long-running dispute between France's Luc Montagnier and America's Robert Gallo, concluding that Montagnier and his colleague Francoise Barre-Sinoussi were the discoverers of the virus. More than 33 million... [read full story]